{"id":419080,"date":"2026-02-11T02:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T02:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419080\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T02:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T02:11:07","slug":"ex-rugby-league-player-josh-jones-says-head-injuries-made-him-suicidal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419080\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-rugby league player Josh Jones says head injuries made him suicidal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jones says he developed various symptoms after being regularly concussed during training and matches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to BBC Sport from Malaysia, where he and his family now live, he said: &#8220;I noticed that if I was doing simple tasks, like making my children a bottle of water, trying to pour it and trying to steady my hand, putting a card in the card machine, putting the keys in the door, I just couldn&#8217;t stop my shaking,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;And that&#8217;s when things progressively started to get worse; headaches, brain fog, neck pain, eye pain\u2026 I&#8217;m sensitive to light and to noise, anxiety, depression.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The scariest thing I find is being unable to regulate my emotions. That terrifies me. I cope with it by just taking myself away. It&#8217;s been at the detriment sometimes of our marriage and me being a father and as a friend. I very much isolate myself.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I would never let my children play, and that&#8217;s a really sad thing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jones&#8217; wife Olivia told BBC Sport that the changes in her husband&#8217;s personality were &#8220;very gradual at first&#8221; but became &#8220;impossible to ignore&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He went from being confident, energetic, and present to being withdrawn, irritable, forgetful &#8211; and he just seemed to be constantly in pain,&#8221; she said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;And he often complained about suffering with headaches, brain fog, and anxiety, and it became quite scary for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jones says he developed various symptoms after being regularly concussed during training and matches. Speaking to BBC Sport&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-419080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}